


star-spangled man

by d0ct0rd0ct0r



Series: Celestucky [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe, Deaf!Steve, Human Experimentation, M/M, Medical Trauma, audism, autistic!Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 17:45:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3578322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d0ct0rd0ct0r/pseuds/d0ct0rd0ct0r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People keep saying “he glows” like they're surprised, like they thought it was just a saying or a perception thing, like they didn't believe it. But it's true. Even in bright sunlight he glows. Always has, it's just that Bucky's not the only one who notices it anymore, and that it's so much brighter than it ever was. [In which Steve Rogers is literally part-star.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	star-spangled man

People keep saying “he glows” like they're surprised, like they thought it was just a saying or a perception thing, like they didn't believe it. But it's true. Even in bright sunlight he glows. Always has, it's just that Bucky's not the only one who notices it anymore, and that it's so much brighter than it ever was. 

It's probably part of the reason he was so certain he'd died back there, because Steve looked like one of the saints in the stained glass windows that always stared at him with empty, judgmental eyes. It was raining, and the pelting droplets looked like a solid halo around an angel's form. He knew a little about angels—his mom's dad, his grandpa David, was a scholar of the Kabbalah “back home”—but when he thought of them, he saw blind rings of light rotating, rotating, rotating. Not the face of his best friend in a black forest through pain and haze. 

But what Bucky thought was a dying hallucination is still present today, even as Steve stands backlit by the rising sun peaking over the horizon. And other people notice it, too. Any time they get mail, they get months' worth of newspapers and everyone makes it a point to share the ridiculous things journalists wrote about Steve. He's been compared to an angel more times than he's comfortable with, and Bucky'd be damned if he was caught nodding, but he secretly agrees. Then again, he'd be damned for a lot of things he keeps secret, even (especially) from Steve. 

A parade of ambassadors and military higher-ups pour out of the cushy autobus and circle Steve, some more fortunate journalists behind them. The click-and-flash of their cameras overwhelm Bucky, but he doesn't even close his eyes from them, doesn't move an inch. He's far less appealing, far less valuable, but he's still on display as much as Steve is. When he keeps up these walls—these rigid monuments that block out the sun and the buzz of several people talking, isolating him within the ringing in his ears and his immediate surroundings—the commotion is somewhat easier to bear. From behind them, like he's looking around a corner, he sees Steve and a familiar discomfort. 

If they were home, if things were like they used to be, this would be when he'd break up the crowd and shield Steve with his body. (“You don't like being touched,” Steve'd remarked once, “why d'you let them--?” “It's different when it's the only thing between them and you.”) But nothing is the same, and Bucky has to remind himself that Steve doesn't need protection any more. Not the same kind, anyway. And it's the worst kind of unbalancing to think about, like when his ears fuzz and ring out with rapidly-shifting telephone rings. It's like the entire world's gone out of place. 

Steve's always made him feel like that. But now, it's not just in the good way. 

So Cap says some things and the crowd dissolves, pleased, forming into groups of twos and threes and chattering amongst themselves. Still frozen in place, Bucky listens. That's one thing he can still do for Steve—be his ears. He listens to the conversations people have behind Steve's back and stores them, transcribing them in shorthand at night for Steve to review. This time, he doesn't catch anything worth writing. It's a small relief. 

Steve looks around and, seeing no one, signals the all-clear. Everyone breaks from parade rest like they're cartoons, with exaggerated sighs of relief. Bucky's walls stay up. He'll need them until the day's done and the only person he'll be talking to is Steve. Anyone else and he needs the walls. Besides, Steve's got a science talk meeting this afternoon and he's going with as an unofficial interpreter. Nobody else, Commandos or otherwise, knows how to sign—or at least, not as well as Bucky. It's nice to still be of use. 

That's how he finds himself sitting straight as a pin in a hard wooden chair, Steve occupying the chair next to his. Even inside, under the yellow glow of the lamps, Steve outshines any of them. It's hard to look away from him. Bucky keeps his face smooth, placid, attention on Steve's hands (not folded but loosely clasped, fingers slotted together) and shoulders. Those are the first places Steve shows his anxiety—especially in his hands, when he doesn't understand what someone is saying. 

They've spent enough frozen nights side-by-side for Bucky to know the lines of Steve's body better than his own.

He hears footsteps and voices from down the hall beyond the half-open door on the other side of the small office. It takes a moment for him to focus on what they're saying, but then their voices are clear. “—purely experimental, I should think, given that we've never observed a black hole.” 

The second voice is low and hurried, either nervous or excited. “No, but they say they've connected to one, at least—one of the doctors has a contraption in his laboratory, one of those same wires powering a centrifuge. It doesn't sound like much, but imagine what we could do if we embedded it within a human sub—” The footsteps stop. 

“Absolute nonsense,” the first voice cuts in again, high and adamant. “Your doctors,” the last syllable rings down the hallway, “are probably nowhere near as trained in this as he was, and even his work with black holes was scant, at best. His work with stars was hardly tested, and we're just lucky that it worked when it did and we didn't have a dead citizen on our hands.” 

“You doubt me,” says the second voice, and Bucky doesn't like the threat in the tone. He can't read people, can't read voices, but he knows a threat when he hears one. “I promise that you won't have much reason to doubt me in the near future.” 

The footsteps start again, and there's only one set this time, walking further from the door and fading into silence. After a moment, and a sigh from the hall, different footsteps approach the door, growing louder until a short, balding man in his middle ages steps into the room. He's wearing a short, white lab coat and there are impressions of goggles around his eyes. The man dusts off his hands and offers one to Steve and Bucky as he sits. He sets his name plaque upright and sits heavily in his chair, leaning forward onto the desk. Doctor Sheh, as the matching letters on the plaque and his badge say, addresses Steve first. 

“Good afternoon, Captain Rogers,” he says—Bucky recognizes the first voice he heard, high and adamant. 

“Same to you, Doctor,” Steve responds, swallowing his old accent with a still-startling ease. He smiles, tight-lipped, and the sharp lines in his face don't reach his eyes. Bucky's eyes never leave his neck. 

Steve doesn't even need his help through the whole thing. The doctor talks at a reasonable pace (not the slow, heavy cadence of most of the people who know Cap's hard of hearing), and half of what he talks about is written on the forms he gives Steve. Bucky stares at Steve's lines and mulls over what he heard from the men in the hallway. It sounded like it had something to do with Steve, but he isn't certain if that means it's relevant to Steve or not. For once, he was an afterthought in a science-based discussion. If anything, Steve would want to hear that. 

Regardless, the way the second man had talked about black holes was too much like the way the committees (endless committees, who even sends this many committees to test on prisoners?) talked about harnessing star power, with that desperate hungry curl at the edge of his voice. It sends shivers down Bucky's spine. Steve would want to know about that, at the very least. Especially considering the mention of something that sounded far too much like “human subjects.” 

He brings it up when they pass notes that night, in the half-dark behind Howard's desk, the engineer's creative cursing and the smell of liquor lighting up the background. “ _Heard that doctor talking to someone in the hall,_ ” his note says. “ _Sounded like it had to do with you. Interested?_ ” 

“ _If that's the only interesting thing you've heard today,_ ” Steve replies in his neat, even handwriting. 

Bucky transcribes the gist of the conversation, the ideas he'd overheard from the hall. He decides to say “human subjects,” even if Dr. Sheh had cut off the other man's statement. “ _Think they meant Erskine here,_ ” he adds, circling the elusive “he” that Sheh mentioned, “ _and you here,_ ” circling the mention of a citizen's corpse. He taps his pen against the page a few times before he closes with a final note: “ _that last thing sounded like a threat._ ” 

Steve reads through the whole thing, face falling from neutral to irritated to an understated horrified grimace. Even so, starlight shines from the freckles on his face. Everyone says it worked, Steve worked, and Bucky can't find the words to tell them that it did more than they thought. Their higher-ups keep it a secret that Steve's hard of hearing, but the details of Rebirth are even more protected. Bucky has a feeling that someone would kill him for knowing too much if he ever mentioned how much Steve told him. But that's why Steve told him and nobody else—because Steve trusts him. More than a brother, more than a part of his own body, Steve trusts him like he holds up the sky and if Bucky fights for anything, it's to live up to that trust. 

“ _Did you catch the name of the other guy?_ ” Steve asks. Bucky shakes his head. “ _Tell me if you hear anything else like this. Sounds like the detail reports are getting into the wrong hands._ ” If he were less forgiving of Steve's idiosyncrasies, Bucky is certain he'd hit Steve for stating something that obvious. Bucky's slow to pick up on things, and he picked up on that. 

“ _I will. That's why I told you now._ ” 

They don't have anything else to say, and Howard's hit a pace in his work, _clank_ -hammer- _click_ , _clank_ -hammer- _click_. The sound, the warmth around Steve, and the constellations projected on his cheeks blur Bucky's vision and put him to an uneasy sleep. He dreams of black butterflies and fire, needles in his neck and the wild feeling of his heart pumping too fast and drowning him in black blood. He doesn't remember when he wakes in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> boy oh boy do i sure love dying and being dead 
> 
> okay, because my really good friend rae showed me some void!danny (fenton) art and then i was talking to my partner ven and i was like, "okay, but what about void!bucky?" and that little statement kind of became a full-fledged au in its own right. don't worry, void!bucky happens later, if you want that to be a thing? please tell me if you want that to be a thing because i may or may not be working on a post-tws fic that's kind of like some nights but celestucky. 
> 
> have fun!!!


End file.
